Reddit reviews Sailing from Byzantium: How a Lost Empire Shaped the World

> while his peers

Let's not paint with too wide a brush now. I'm Greek, but was raised without religion and have been an atheist for years now. The vast majority of Greek Orthodox priests and monks are more than happy to just sit down and have a conversation with someone regardless of if they're gay, atheist, muslim, or whatever else.

Just like Catholicism. Or Buddhism. The religion is made up of many different people, and the holy men are the same way.

One of my father's friends is a Greek Orthodox priest. He trained as a priest right after high school, and the guy is reaching 70 now. Growing up, my father knew him because he was the priest in their village. They kept in touch and now the guy is posted in Toronto. Him and my father speak every now and then, mostly when the priest gets some cool piece of technology he wants to show off. He drives an STI, has an Android phone with a custom ROM he put on it himself, and he goes on weekend skiing trips (on which he ends up looking hilarious in his long black robes and long North Face skiing jacket). He's been on the side of homosexuals for many years, and always said it was a matter of time before they become accepted by the church. Obviously the Metropolitan in the OP isn't speaking for the entire church but he's speaking for many in it.

One more thing - we all have this idea that the Byzantine Empire (pretty much the origin of the current Greek Orthodox church) was this ass-backwards nation of monks and nuns but, in reality, it was a very progressive Empire with a lot of things you wouldn't expect outside of Ancient Greece/Rome and modern societies like open relationships and homosexuals.

EDIT: Shameless plug for an amazing podcast and great book (links don't show because of subreddit style but hover over the words "amazing podcast" and "great book" for the podcast site and Amazon book link respectively).

There is a book [Sailing From Byzantium] (http://www.amazon.com/Sailing-Byzantium-Empire-Shaped-World/dp/055338273X) by Colin Wells that is about this very subject. It is a fantastic read. I would highly recommend it. It talks about the legacy of the Empire in the West, Middle East, and in the Slavic world.

Well the thing they are always complaining about is the kind of myth that post-Rome was a terrible Dark Age with no progress. Things were still being done in terms of philosophy and research during that time.

Also, Rome didn't exactly fall with Attila- there were a number of invasions into Western Rome and its difficult to draw a precise line on where "Rome" as an idea stopped and started to be "Byzantium."

If you're at all interested in History, I suggest Sailing From Byzantium to see about how things still flourished in the so-called Dark Ages, and really just browsing through Wikipedia a bit here should get you well acquainted with the truth.